Obamacare was carefully constructed to manipulate the standard ten-year cost projections of the CBO. Because benefits would not fully kick in for four years, President Obama could trumpet ten-year gross costs of less than $1 trillion – $938 billion, to be exact.

But now that the near-costless years 2010 and 2011 have elapsed, the true ten-year price tag comes into focus. From 2013 through 2022, the CBO reports, the costs of Obamacare come to $1.76 trillion – almost twice the phony original number.

It gets worse. Annual gross costs after 2021 are more than a quarter of a trillion dollars every year – until the end of time. That, for a new entitlement in a country already drowning in $16 trillion of debt.

And there you have it. The cost was all about smoke and mirrors in order to get it passed. It was dishonest from the get go, and they knew it. But they also knew that once a gigantic entitlement program gets passed in this country, it’s almost impossible to reverse any part of it.

So, it will come down to the constitutionality of Obamacare, and given the sadly partisan make up of the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy is the wild card. So much at stake here, and it all comes down to this one man? It’s truly mind boggling.

Ultimately, the question will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?

If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers – i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions.

Did you get that? “The effective end of a government of enumerated powers.” That’s what I mean by mind boggling. A government of no limits. Not a government of the people any more. That’s it. The end of this glorious run as a free people. Once that door is opened, there is no closing it.

Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by – indeed required by – Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state – grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality, and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness.

We will find out in June, when the Supreme Court ruling is made public.